Working over the Summer

How many of you catch yourselves working over the summer?  If I had to take a guess, it's not just me.  I have been out of school for 6 (counting the weekend) days and have already started to "work" again.   During the last month of school I was extremely busy in every part of my life.  On Tuesday I took the day for myself and went to a coffee shop organized my digital files and started to catch up on my blogs.

If you haven't been to growingkinder.blogspot.com you have to check it out.  Blogs have become a new thing for me this year and I have a little O.C.D. and have to go back to the very beginning of a lot of the blogs I have found.  This has been the case for growing kinders and boy and I glad I have done that.  She has so many great ideas!  She doesn't have the files for you to download so I have been recreating a lot of what I see.  I can't wait to use and post all of the ideas in Sept./Oct.

I know this is a little late but just so you don't stop by without getting anything I am going to attach the end of the year poem I gave to kiddos.  My friend next door did the same thing but she rolled a piece of chalk up in it and tied it like a diploma, too cute!

Kindergarten Graduation Poem 2

Enjoy!

L

Summer Homework

Let's face the fact, we just can't let our kinders go and want them to remember us dearly so we create homework for them to do all summer, just what every kid wants.

In the same fashion I do my homework all year for my kiddos I made 3 more months worth to cover the summer.  If you have taught kindergarten for any period of time you know our dear friend kelly from kellyskindergarten and that is where I got the idea for my homework.  I have taken many ideas from her but tweak it a bit to fit my style and my kiddos needs.

Summer Homework 2011

Enjoy!

L

Counting down

While I'm not afraid to admit I have a countdown to the last day (come on, who doesn't) and can't wait, some of me isn't ready.  I love my kiddos and will be sad to say goodbye but honestly they are ready for first grade and I am excited to see them in first grade.  Plus, they make me feel like a movie star in the hallway, it's too cute.

Now that I have made it clear that I love my kiddos and I will be sad to see them go I can tell you that they aren't the reason I would like the year to go on but rather, I am not ready to tear down and pack up my classroom.  At my school we have to take everything down and off the walls, fit everything in a cupboard and pretty much leave our room looking as sterile as possible at the end of the year.  On the last day we have to turn in our keys and we aren't allowed back in until 2 or 3 days before school starts.  I teach in Utah but am from Ohio and back home it isn't like that, teachers are allowed in year round so I don't know if what I am experiencing here is normal or is back home is normal but either way I don't like being locked out for the summer.  It is bad enough that we are only allowed in our rooms from 7:00-5:30 M-F anyways.

If you are anything like me, which I'm guess you are because you're reading blogs right now, you have all these fantastic ideas you find while blogstalking and can't wait to implement them.  I'm not ready for the year to end because I have things I want to make and prepare for next year.

Are you allowed in your room over the summer?  How much do you have to take down and put away?

L

Egg Addition

We have been working on addition in my class a lot lately. My students seem be getting it quite well although we are still working on the counting on thing. I had been trying to think of something I could do with easter eggs and this came to mind.

I filled my easter eggs with those two sided counters, you know the red and yellow ones and gave one to each student and they were to dump out the easter egg and write the addition problem they saw. Ex. 3 red and 4 yellow would be 3+4= and then they had to write the answer.

Here is cute little paper to go with it.

Hatch an Egg

When I filled the eggs I filled all the pink with 5 the green with 6 the purple with 7 and so on so I could check my students work. I had them color a little dot of the color of egg they were using to the side so I would know which egg they had done but once I passed out the eggs and a few minutes had gone by they were so in to it they weren't careful about putting all of the little counters back in and so my system was unreliable. I was walking around the entire time and I felt like that gave me a great idea of who was getting it and who was struggling.

We had great fun with this activity and I hope you can use it in one way or another.

What other kinds of fun things do you do with addition in your classroom?

L

Popcorn Anyone?

I love sight words!  I have been so blown away at how quickly my students have learned their popcorn words this year and how good they are at pointing them out.  Below are a few fun popcorn related documents for you.


I printed these out on regular white paper, cut around the edges and wrapped them around a bag of popcorn for my kiddos who have mastered reading all of their popcorn words.  They loved it!

Popcorn Words Award

I wrote their names on the little popcorn piece she has in her hand and they got to hang the piece on the big popcorn bucket on the wall. (I forgot to take a pic. of that.)

We love to "Bang" with our popcorn words whole group so I made these popcorn pieces with our sight words on them to use.  To play put all the pieces in some kind of container. I use the plastic popcorn buckets you can get in the dollar bin at Target or many other places.  Children take turns pulling one popcorn word out at a time and read it to their partner or group.  The children will keep taking turns until someone pulls a "BANG" card.  The student who pulls the "BANG" card has to put all their pieces back in the bucket.  To play this game whole group place 4 BANG cards into the sight word pile.  Hold up sight words 1 by 1 having the students read.  When you hold up a BANG card all sight word cards go back into the pile.  Play for a couple of rounds.Popcorn Bang
What fun things do you do to encourage mastery of sight words?
L

Another Kindergarten Blog

This year I have found myself reading more and more blogs and to be honest, I wouldn't be the teacher I am without them.  The amount of great ideas and support I have received has been a true blessing.  I feel like I need to give back and so what you find here is my attempt to do so.  I went back and forth for a while as to whether or not I should start a blog because I haven't created tons of things that were my own idea.  In the end, I decided I would share what little I do have and direct you to the wonderful people I have begged, borrowed and stolen from!

L